America First

Published: October 24, 1999

To the Editor:

In his review of Patrick J. Buchanan's book ''A Republic, Not an Empire'' (Oct. 3), John B. Judis implies that ''isolationism'' was a doctrine of the far right and suggests that an isolationist position during World War II and anti-Semitism were necessarily linked. But surely Judis wouldn't argue that such progressives as Norman Thomas, John L. Lewis, Oswald Garrison Villard, Charles Beard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Dwight Macdonald were ''right-wing cranks'' and anti-Semites because they were isolationists.

Judis criticizes Buchanan for praising the America First committee ''without acknowledging the anti-Semitism of its most famous spokesman, Charles Lindbergh.'' True, Lindbergh was a prominent member of America First -- as were the liberals Robert La Follette Jr., Robert Hutchins, Chester Bowles, Sinclair Lewis, E. E. Cummings, John T. Flynn and Sidney Hertzberg. And yes, Lindbergh did write some comments in his unpublished diaries that we would now consider anti-Semitic. But Lindbergh's ''genteel'' anti-Semitism was unrelated to his isolationism. No less products of their era and class than

was Lindbergh, a great many pro-interventionists -- among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, George Kennan and even Walter Lippmann -- also wrote anti-Semitic statements (which, by the way, were far less genteel than Lindbergh's). Would Judis argue that in praising the pro-interventionist position, an author must also acknowledge the anti-Semitism of some of its major proponents?